Coming soon: Reimagining working and being together
A new home for my writing about the new ways of working movement
Someone once introduced me at a conference as ‘a reporter on the future of work.’ I like that title a lot. Perhaps some of you reading this are listeners of my podcast, Leadermorphosis, or readers of some of my other writing – either my book, my Medium posts, or my articles for Corporate Rebels.
If you are discovering my work for the first time, welcome. This is a place for exploring the so-called ‘new ways of working’ movement together. If you are a fan of books like ‘Reinventing Organisations’ by Frederic Laloux, or inspired by organisations experimenting with self-managing teams like Buurtzorg, or practising your own experiments in decentralised organising, or if you simply feel in your bones that there must be another way of working together, then you are in the right place.
Why Substack?
More and more writers I admire are writing here and galvanising communities and dialogue around their posts. I also wanted an excuse to build a more regular writing practice – one that is more akin to ‘thinking out loud’, processing conversations I’ve had for my podcast or with other practitioners of self-management, or experiences from the training programmes I facilitate and the kinds of challenges and breakthroughs that emerge there.
I’ve called my Substack ‘Reimagining working and being together’ because I believe that the paradigm shift we are gesturing towards is about much more than just changing structures and processes. The more I explore this topic, the more I realise it is bigger than reinventing work. I think there are many parallel ongoing shifts (related to the climate crisis, parenting, relationships, economics, and many more) that point to a need for reconnecting to what makes us human, to what brings us together ‘in right relationship with change’ (as adrienne maree brown would say) so that we can address the complex challenges we are facing today.
The purpose of publishing these posts:
To facilitate sense-making (for myself and others) – What are we learning in the new ways of working movement? What are some pitfalls we can avoid? What examples can we learn from?
To showcase a variety of examples and approaches – I’m a big believer in avoiding dogma. How can we celebrate unique examples across cultures and sectors? Are there underlying principles we can discern, without trying to copy and paste something that was not created by us?
To normalise growing pains – Self-management is not a utopia. It is a lifelong, bumpy journey. What growing pain stories can we share so that others don’t feel so alone? How can we encourage each other to learn to digest the uncomfortable, to not give up, to find breakthroughs in the breakdowns?
To wrestle with big questions and uncomfortable truths – How are we (unconsciously) perpetuating the violent patterns of the organisational models we are trying to avoid? Are we using helpful language or is it counterproductive? These questions, and many more, are important to sit with, in my opinion.
To develop a regular writing practice – To learn out loud, to share unfinished ideas and looming questions in the hopes that it will contribute to the movement, as well as my development.
And the meta purpose of all of this is: to inspire and embolden people to experiment with new ways of working. To move from the thinking space into the doing and being space.
So if all of this sounds energising to you, welcome aboard! And let me know in the comments if you have any burning questions or themes you’d like me to explore in upcoming posts.
Thank you Lisa. I have been thinking about writing here for a few weeks and you have inspired me. You are gifted at curating learning. I am looking forward to your reflections.